Bailey Hall - Lawrence, Kansas - U.S. National Register of Historic Places on Waymarking.com

The Bailey Hall (Chemistry Building) at the University of Kansas is located on the northwest corner of Jayhawk Drive and Sunflower, with its front elevation facing south onto Jayhawk Drive. Erected between 1899 and 1900, the new chemistry building replaced an older, much smaller chemistry building erected in 1883 and situated in close proximity to the site of the new building. The location on Mt. Oread was ideal because its limestone base provided a strong fountain for the new chemistry building and it was near local limestone quarries.

Bailey Hall is a massive, load-baring masonry building, a modified H-shape in plan, consisting of four stories, including a basement, and measures 187 feet in length and 70 feet in width at its broadest point. All four elevations consist of boldly rusticated irregular limestone blocks of varying dimensions, quarried locally, with deep joints laid in random courses to simulate the natural state of the limestone.

Except for a few changes, Bailey stands today much as it did when it was completed in 1900. Situated on the slightly sloping northern edge of the Mt. Oread ridge, the front elevation of Bailey Hall, as seen in a 1902 photograph, is eleven bays with the projecting end pavilions consisting of four basement windows, with projecting rusticated limestone sills and lintels. A slightly projecting string course, which the continues around the building, separates the basement from the upper floors. Above the basement two bays of three windows define the first, second and third floors. Each pavilion has its own hipped roof and dormers containing three windows are situated on the roof of the west pavilion and on the roof flanking the central bay of the building. On the pavilion's inner wall are two basement windows with coupled windows defining the three upper floors. All Bailey Hall's fenestration is wood framed sash windows that presumably is of the same type and material as the original windows.

The seven-bay central section has a series of three basement windows flanking the entrance and above a single window alternates with a coupled window on the three upper stories. The slightly projecting entrance bay is the most elaborate section of Bailey Hall. The entrance, which has been seriously compromised by an aluminum and glass canopy, consists of a broad round arch opening composed of rusticated voussoirs springing from an impost decorated with a modified egg and dart motif. Beginning at the second floor the central bay is flanked by chimneys that originally continued beyond the roof line. The second floor has a blind balustrade followed by a coupled window and above is a series of smooth limestone blocks carved with the date 1900, the completion date of Bailey Hall. On the third floor is a coupled window with a fanlight enclosed in a rusticated arch with a slightly elongated keystone. At the roof line is a series of three large, smooth-faced limestone blocks with Bailey Hall carved in gold lettering. The chimneys continue above the pitched metal roof and originally flanked a three-window dormer. Bailey was particularly proud of the series of fans, flues and chimneys that dotted the original pitched metal roof and served to eliminate noxious fumes and introduce fresh air. When the chemistry department moved out of Bailey Hall and was replaced by the School of Education in 1954, the chimneys and flues were eliminated.

The only architectural playfulness enlivening this very somber, functional elevation is a series of different window lintels. They vary from the thick slightly projecting monolithic rusticated lintels of the basement windows, the arched rusticated lintels of the first floor to the slender monolithic rusticated lintels of the second story and the flat arch rusticated lintels of the third floor. These lintels and the arched entrance portal are the only overt references associating Bailey Hall with the Romanesque Revival.

The east and west side elevations are not identical. The three-bay east elevation is defined by a boldly projecting central section that houses the stair well. The end bays have a full basement window followed by pairs of single windows on the first and second floors and no window on the third floor. The central section has four windows on each side and a round-arch entrance with rusticated voussoirs followed by arched windows with rusticated voussoirs on the three upper stories and a hipped roof. The west elevation consists of four floors with seven bays and a hipped roof. Unfortunately, a fire escape that winds its way up the face of the elevation has compromised the character of the west elevation. The eleven-bay rear elevation facing north has four floors and is the most severely altered of all Bailey Hall's elevations. A five-story tower clad with smooth-faced limestone blocks set in irregular courses with a fifth story of wood was superimposed onto the central section and partially obliterates the fenestration of each of the elevation's four floors.